From: Colin Hales (colin@versalog.com.au)
Date: Tue Oct 09 2001 - 17:35:30 MDT
"Nothing beats science...yet"
A lovely/most concise definition of the scientific method!
Send me a gross of bumper stickers now.
In considering this thread I found a small trend that seemed to suggest that
it is possible to absolutely 'nail' facts. It seems to me that facts about
the natural world can never completely be known, only theorised about and
modelled to ever increasing levels of demonstrable certainty. A handy
classifier for my simple brain is
FACTS: Aspects of reality.
TRUTH: Facts as observed and subsequently reported OR held to be true (=
beliefs)
Facts about the natural world are everywhere. Truth is a human construct and
falls over at the first moment the demand "Prove it" leaves you wondering.
Describing/defining facts perfectly at all levels may be the only thing in
the universe I believe (here's my truth- and I can't prove it!) may be
impossible. I actually find this comforting---lots of stuff to find out
forever.
This leads me to a poem I wrote recently. It alludes to the above. None of
my family/friends get it, but I think you guys will. I am yet another
critter writing a sci fi novel and this is what it's about....
King tide of thought reshapes Wheeler's beach
Surf's wane and new foot prints
Skirt discarded meme moguls,
Parsing shards of yesterday's riddles.
>From the dunes I can view shadows of conjecture shoals,
Guess the horizon of promise,
follow beckoning breezes into point of folly
and low wide bight of plausibility
fashioned by the rationals in their quest.
The armies of sleepy people know nought of the shore
In their torpid blindness
Though they be where the shore once was.
Oblivious that what was once beyond it
now runs their lives.
Sparse few on the beach,
shoulders to the future
talk in pictures hoping the sleepy folk
will leave them be.
An answer is a thousand questions
A question is a candle to a cavern
And to taste the lapping waters of the shore
is sweet lunch with everyone's God
at Wheeler's beach
My urge to share is now sated.....back to quantum computing and brains.
cheers
col
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